


Through A Year of Days

by Eupheno, lily_winterwood



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Illustrated, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Nobility, Sailing, Seaside, Top Katsuki Yuuri, Water Spirit, YOI Nautical Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 16:04:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14548341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eupheno/pseuds/Eupheno, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lily_winterwood/pseuds/lily_winterwood
Summary: It has become a ritual, this nightly jaunt with Makkachin along the water’s edge, listening to the waves and looking for signs of a ship along the darkened horizon.A piece forFair Winds and Following Seas, done in collaboration withSchmesa.





	Through A Year of Days

The beach is a sliver of silver stardust between the dark embraces of sea and shore. Here in the velvet blackness of the night, a young man steps along the sand with a brown poodle at his side. A brisk wind ruffles through his hair, counterpoint to the roaring of the waves beside him and the sting of sea spray filling his nostrils.

The poodle barks, causing the man to startle and look out towards the surf, craning in the darkness for a sign of something beyond the whitewater. When nothing shows up, he huffs, breathing into his palms to warm them up faster as he continues to stride alongside the dog.

“Makkachin, there’s nothing there,” he rebukes. The dog looks back and wags his tail, before rushing into the surf and returning with a plank of driftwood in his mouth. He drops the plank; with a sigh the man picks it up and throws it ahead of them down the beach. Makkachin gives chase, and the man smiles as he walks along behind.

After a while, Makkachin tires, so their footsteps turn towards the coast, and the little stone cottage nestled against the base of a set of soaring sea-cliffs.

The man always holds his breath when he enters, just before he turns on the lamp. In its soft glow, the living room and kitchen are empty, the potbelly stove in the kitchen as cold as it had been when he had left it earlier in the evening. Sighing, the man starts a fire up again, rubbing his hands together in the light of the fire just before he closes the stove door.

He puts the kettle on for a cup of tea, before returning to the living room where Makkachin is curled up in one of the armchairs by the fire, tail drooped in an approximate representation of his own heart. With a sigh, the man scratches lightly behind the poodle’s ear, before crossing out another date on the calendar hanging on the wall. An entire year of Xs, and still, this.

With a sigh, the young man takes a seat in the armchair opposite Makkachin, one finger stroking over the photograph of another young man sitting on the little table beside him. This man’s hair is floppy, tied into a short ponytail, and though he doesn’t smile in this picture, in the memory that accompanies it he does.

So many surfaces of this cottage are covered in dust, having been untended to for such a long while. But this photograph remains shining and bright, as fresh as the day they’d picked up the print. Yuuri smiles as he brushes down the imaginary dust from its surface, before being startled by the sound of the kettle whistling in the kitchen.

That night, he dreams of the sea like he had many a night before, and prays that Viktor will come home soon.

* * *

A young man with a snarl of blond hair and striking green eyes visits Yuuri the next afternoon.

“You shouldn’t have, Yuri,” says Yuuri as the young man steps over the threshold, a crate laden with food in his arms. “I could have gone into town and —”

“But you haven’t.” Yuri rolls his eyes, carefully setting a basket full of eggs and several bottles of milk down alongside the crate. “You haven’t been back in town in months, much less the markets. People are wondering if you’ve died.”

“Then you’re clearly taking away my excuse to go into town,” Yuuri points out, as he puts the kettle on. “Stay, I’ll make tea.”

He pours two cups of tea, assembles a tray of small finger sandwiches. Yuri contemplatively rubs a finger over the rim of his cup as Yuuri bites into one of the sandwiches.

“Some crewmembers were spotted in another port,” he says.

“Of the _Stammi Vicino_?” asks Yuuri.

“Yeah.” Yuri shrugs. “No sign of Viktor, though.”

“He’ll turn up,” Yuuri replies, surprising himself with the firmness in his own voice. “He promised he would.”

Yuri sends him an odd look. “My brother often makes promises he can’t keep,” he points out drily.

“Not with me,” Yuuri replies, his knuckles white on the handle of his mug. “He’ll come home, Yura, I know it.”

“It must be nice,” says Yuri, and his eyes are pitying, “to have such faith in him.”

Faith, yes. The cornerstone of their love, in a way. They’d built castles for each other out of promises, forevers out of wishes made true. Lost together in their little cottage by the sea, Viktor and Yuuri had crafted a cosmos from the infinite possibilities of the future, and became so entwined in one another that each day of separation feels more like an eternity.

But Yuri couldn’t possibly begin to understand that. He could see the remnants of it maybe, in the smile Yuuri reserves only for that photograph of Viktor, in the wistful looks out the surfside windows and the long restless pacing along the beach. But he could never comprehend the tides which hollowed Yuuri’s heart like the sea-pillars off the coastline, a slow erosion which had begun the instant he had kissed Viktor goodbye on the edge of the harbour docks.

His own ‘I love you’ had choked in his throat then, but now they flow to him as smooth as water, as easy as breathing. At the time, though, all Yuuri could do was push Viktor towards the ship, raising his handkerchief in farewell as the stern of the ship bobbed away in the brisk, favourable trade winds.

He had stayed on the dock long after the ship had vanished from sight, his heart lodged in his throat and his vision blurred with the tears he could not shed.

* * *

It has become a ritual, this nightly jaunt with Makkachin along the water’s edge, listening to the waves and looking for signs of a ship along the darkened horizon. Makkachin chases after a seagull trying to find a place to settle for the night; Yuuri watches him with a small smile, remembering how Makkachin had woven through the dancing crowds at the Spring Dance and collided with him, toppling him back onto the grass.

The rest of the night from thereon had been a blur of drink and movement. Even now, Yuuri still can’t recall the finer details beyond the warmth suffusing through his limbs at every touch of Viktor’s hand, the lightheaded giddiness of the whirling couples around them, the honey-wine sweetness of Viktor’s lips as they kiss over and over again in the darkness of the bay. _They had stumbled off together_ , Yuuri would hear eventually through the gossip of the fishermen’s wives in the market the morning after. _Lord Feltsman’s son and the innkeeper’s boy_. It makes his heart race even now, remembering that first night together — the first of many to come.

Makkachin barks urgently, his body and tail suddenly growing stiff. Yuuri pulls himself out of his memories, looking towards where the poodle’s snout is angled. There’s a figure sitting in the surf, long flowing hair shining in the gathering twilight. Yuuri’s heart leaps into his throat, but Makkachin is already darting towards the figure, kicking up sand in his wake. He stops just short of the figure, though, a piteous whine escaping his throat as his tail wags hopefully.

Yuuri steps forward, too, his heart hammering somewhere near his jugular. He reaches out, and the figure tilts its face up towards him, and Yuuri’s breath flees him in a mixture of relief and shock. He’d remember that face anywhere.

“Viktor?” he asks, and the figure smiles.

Viktor is bedraggled and weary, but there’s no mistaking the brightness of his eyes or the heart shape of his smile. Yuuri wants to tuck himself into that smile, curl up in the warmth of those eyes and never leave again.

But then Viktor shivers a little, and Yuuri jolts himself out of his reverie to take off his coat and wrap it around Viktor’s shoulders. The bitter winds bite at him through his thin shirt and grey jumper, but he feels very little of it as he slides his arm around Viktor’s waist and guides him back to their cottage.

“You look frightful,” he says. “We should warm you up.”

Viktor says nothing, only reaches for his hand and squeezes. Yuuri’s heart squeezes at that, too; Viktor’s hands are cold and his teeth chatter with each step back to the cottage. But all of that is easily amendable, as the important part is that Viktor is back with Yuuri, safe and sound at last.

“It’s pretty much just like you left it,” Yuuri says, once he’s back in the kitchen of the cottage and starting up the stove to heat up the cottage. He also lights a fire in the hearth, just to be sure that Viktor is as warm as possible. “I can bring out some blankets, if you’re still cold —”

He turns. Viktor is still by the threshold, eyes uncertain. Next to him, Makkachin continues to nose at his hand curiously, as if asking why Viktor isn’t laughing or petting him like he should be. Apprehension settles thick and dark in Yuuri’s chest at that, but he forces it down and extends a hand. Viktor takes it.

“Come, sit down,” he suggests as he leads Viktor over the threshold, and Viktor follows with eyes wide and hesitant, his steps like a skittish animal ready to bolt for a hiding place at the slightest provocation. Something dreadful must have happened to him out at sea, for him to stare so suspiciously at surroundings that should be familiar, and Yuuri’s heart wrenches at that.

He guides Viktor gently into his old armchair, brushing a little bit of hair out of his face. “I’ll put on a kettle for some tea. Or would you like a bath? Or both?”

“Some tea,” says Viktor, his voice quiet as he rolls the words around in his mouth like new playthings. Yuuri nods, drags over the afghan from his own armchair, and drapes it into Viktor’s lap.

“I’ll get you something to eat, too,” he suggests. “Yura brought some pirozhki in his delivery today. You’re just in time — he’ll be back again by the end of the week, and he’d love to see you.”

Viktor smiles at that. “Did he miss me?” he asks.

Yuuri chuckles, heartened by that response. “I think so,” he says, “but he hides it well.”

“Of course.” Viktor rubs his hands together, holds them out in the direction of the orange flames flickering in the hearth. “Thank you, Yuuri.”

Yuuri shrugs. “Anything for you,” he says, and then goes to close the cottage door.

The tea comes shortly after, along with some warmed up pirozhki on a plate. Viktor tears into them with gusto, washing it down with the tea after. Yuuri watches him, the apprehension slowly loosening in his chest. Each bite brings more colour back to Viktor’s cheeks; by the end of it, he looks more lively than he had been on the beach. His clothes, too, have largely dried out, though some wetness remains at the hems.

“Let me run a bath for you,” Yuuri suggests. Viktor taps his lips thoughtfully at that, a gesture Yuuri has sorely missed.

“Only if you get in with me,” he says cheerily, and Yuuri feels himself flushing under the man’s mischievous gaze. “My hair’s such a mess; you could comb it out for me.”

Yuuri huffs at that. “I could do that from outside the tub,” he points out.

He’s startled a little by Viktor’s hand on his forearm. The other man’s expression is earnest, open. Yuuri couldn’t say no to those eyes half a lifetime ago, and he can’t say no to them now.

“Please,” wheedles Viktor.

Yuuri caves. It’s an inevitability, like the slow erosion of cliffs into the sea. “Okay,” he says.

* * *

The water he draws for the bath is warm enough to fog up his glasses, so Yuuri doesn’t quite see Viktor entering the bathroom until he wipes off his glasses and catches an eyeful of pale skin inches from his face.

He pulls back, briefly startled. Viktor is all smiles when he comes back into focus, kneeling down next to Yuuri and tugging at the hem of his jumper. “You don’t need this in the bath,” he teases, his voice sing-song. Yuuri blames the heat on his face from the steam rising from the tub.

Viktor blithely steps into the tub, resting his arms on the edge as he gazes up at Yuuri. Suddenly self-conscious, Yuuri turns his back on the tub as he disrobes, warmth creeping through his body at the knowledge that Viktor’s eyes are fixed firmly on him, and only him.

Finally, he’s unlacing his undergarments, slowly rolling them down his legs with a hesitant shift of his hips. He steps out of them awkwardly, swallowing as the linen falls to the ground, and turns around to see Viktor’s appreciative, darkened stare from the tub.

“I’ve missed this,” Viktor breathes. Yuuri’s heart flutters as he clambers into the tub next to him, scrunching himself at one end with his hands on his knees. Viktor runs a hand through his long, unkempt hair, and smiles.

“Do you want me to?” Yuuri asks. Viktor nods eagerly, sloshing bathwater everywhere as he turns and settles against Yuuri’s legs, his head tilted back so his hair can float in the water, like silvery seaweed. Yuuri runs his fingers through them, gently working out the snarls and tangles.

He remembers the last time they had bathed together in this tub. Viktor had been determined to be with him, despite his family’s misgivings and objections. So they had purchased this cottage with the last of Viktor’s allowance, and fixed it up into a home. But Yuuri’s own income could not support them both, so Viktor had found employment in the form of a shipping company in need of a bookkeeper.

And though it had taken more than three months in the end, Viktor has finally returned. Yuuri washes out the soap in Viktor’s hair, and reaches for the tinctures that would make it shine. Viktor relaxes against him, boneless and trusting, and Yuuri’s heart has never been so full.

With a sigh, he presses his lips to the silky locks. “I’m glad you’re back,” he says, and a brief shadow flickers over Viktor’s face before he turns around, pressing their foreheads together.

“Remind me,” he begs. “Remind me of the love we shared together here.”

Yuuri’s throat goes drier than the sand on a sweltering summer day. But at the earnest look on Viktor’s face, there is only one real action.

He leans in, and kisses him.

* * *

Every curve of Viktor’s body is a memory.

Touching him is like re-exploring a well-loved map. Yuuri still remembers the secret places that make him scream, remembers the exact touches that drive all semblance of language out of his mind. Viktor tastes dimly of saltwater; his fingers tangle in Yuuri’s hair and cling with a familiar ache.

Loving Viktor Nikiforov had always been a bit like weathering a tempest, but tonight feels especially that way. Viktor’s frantic movements beneath him feel akin to a summer storm, hot and tumultuous. Yuuri can only cling on with the same sort of desperation, his hands working against the shaft of his lover’s cock. He himself is buried in Viktor, hips pushing needily into him, drawing a long-missed symphony of moans and cries from him.

Viktor had been like this on the night before the departure, too. He had ridden Yuuri then, body arching silvery in the moonlight streaming in from their window. Yuuri’s breath had been stolen then as it is stolen now, as he traces his tongue along the alabaster line of Viktor’s throat and tangles his hands in his long silver hair.

“Yuuri,” gasps Viktor, cupping his face as Yuuri continues to thrust into him. His face is open, vulnerable, with tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. Yuuri feels a knot of emotions in his own throat, but he barely has time to swallow it before Viktor is pulling him down by his nape to kiss him again, hungry and desperate.

It takes him only a couple more thrusts before he’s coming, and Viktor follows shortly after with a soft cry of Yuuri’s name. Yuuri reaches out, stroking away a stray tear from Viktor’s face as he pulls out and steps away to find a wet cloth to clean them up.

Viktor’s clothes are still drying in the chair in the corner of the room by the washbasin. Most of the cloth is dry, but the hems are still sopping wet, tinged greenish in the light of Yuuri’s lamp. He frowns a little, picking up Viktor’s shirt and examining it more closely.

“I’m sorry,” Viktor’s voice suddenly says from the bed. Startled, Yuuri turns around, meeting the tear-stricken face of his beloved.

“Viktor?” he whispers, his voice hoarse and concerned. He wets a washcloth, swiftly returning to the bed to mop up the mess on their bodies. “What’s wrong?”

Viktor’s tears drop like translucent pearls onto Yuuri’s fingers. “We promised each other so much,” he breathes. “We said we’d grow old together, that our souls would never be parted.”

“What are you talking about?” Yuuri breathes, his heart stuttering in his chest.

“I can’t stay,” Viktor chokes out. “It was so — I tried so — only one night —”

“Darling, you’re not making sense.”

“I’m not really him,” Viktor blurts, and Yuuri’s heart briefly stops.

“So you’re…” The words refuse to come out. Saying it would only make it real, and Yuuri doesn’t want it to be real.

_Water spirit._

Viktor nods anyway. Yuuri shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “You’re not. You’re Viktor. You look like him, and you sound like him, and — no. He’s not —”

“I’m so sorry,” Viktor breathes, and suddenly the room blurs and spins. Yuuri squeezes his eyes shut, dimly aware of the hot tears trickling down his cheeks.

“No,” he repeats, because there’s no other word that can encapsulate the way the world has been yanked out from under his feet. Viktor could not be gone. This could not be —

“I tried so hard,” Viktor begs. “I don’t even know where I — I don’t — All I knew was that I had to come back to you. Because I promised you when I was alive that I would do it, even if the stars went out and the sky fell and the sea burned to keep us apart —”

“I should’ve made you stay.” Yuuri presses their foreheads together, his hands moving along Viktor’s body, still fleeting warm, still _alive_. “I let you go, I let you _die_ —”

“We didn’t know,” Viktor points out, and Yuuri can’t tell if the salt on his tongue is from his tears or Viktor’s. “We didn’t know, my darling. It’s going to be all right.”

“No, it’s _not_.” Yuuri pulls back, holding him at arm’s length. “You’re… you’re not really here.”

“I am,” says Viktor. “But only for a little while. I had to make sure you were okay, before —”

Yuuri silences him with a kiss. Viktor melts into it, mouth opening up as Yuuri deepens it, hands coming to settle gently against Yuuri’s waist. Yuuri’s heart clenches, vice-like; for a moment longer, he could still pretend that Viktor had really returned to him.

“Stay with me,” he says quietly when they break apart.

“I wish I could,” replies Viktor, his eyes swimming with as many emotions as there are fish in the sea. Cold resignation creeps in on Yuuri’s bones, but he stalls it by stroking a finger through Viktor’s hair, pressing a kiss to the silky strands with a soft sigh.

“I’ll find you,” he promises. “Even if the heavens try to stop me.”

“I’ll wait for you,” replies Viktor, “for as long as it will take.”

“I love you,” Yuuri whispers, pressing a kiss to where Viktor’s heart should beat. Viktor nods, pulling him close in his deceptively warm arms. Yuuri chokes back his tears as he buries his face against Viktor’s neck, inhaling the scent of sea spray.

With the pieces of his broken heart, Yuuri clings onto the mirage of his lover as he succumbs to waves of sleep.

* * *

In the morning, the sun is bleak and pale, and the spot where Viktor had lain the night before is colder than the grave.

Makkachin looks at Yuuri inquiringly as he enters the living room. A lump rises in Yuuri’s throat at the sight of the old, loyal dog, but after a long while of trying to swallow it, Yuuri gives up and sits down next to Makkachin on the hearth rug, and buries the last of his tears for Viktor in the poodle’s fur.

Slowly, he hollows out the cottage again, packing their memories up in boxes and moving them back into town. He only spends a month at the family inn before Yuri takes pity on him and moves him into Lord Feltsman’s estate.

The wreckage of the _Stammi Vicino_ is discovered in the spring of the new year, and among the artefacts brought to light there is a tightly-sealed box waterproofed with wax. Inside the box is a photograph of Yuuri and a paper that declares him, as Viktor’s common law husband, as the sole inheritor of all that is Viktor’s. A body is never found.

The years pass, nonetheless. The trees grow and shed their leaves, the crops flourish and are harvested in the autumn. Yuuri takes over Lord Feltsman’s duties to the town, presiding at events with a smile he borrows from the rest of the townsfolk. He supervises the spring dances, the harvest bonfires, the midwinter feasts, but all the while he just watches the clock, waiting for something he can’t quite name. He never marries.

The years pass, and Makkachin’s bones become too old for him to chase after driftwood on the beach or bark at passing squirrels. He spends his last days by the seaside, looking out onto the horizon and listening to the waves. As he sits by Viktor’s erstwhile companion, Yuuri feels as aged as him, as if he had left his life and love languishing somewhere at the bottom of the sea.

And when Makkachin passes, too, Yuuri realises the time has come.

“This is stupid,” says Yuri on an autumn morning, several long years after that fateful night. Yuuri presses the key to the cottage into his hands anyway.

“Take care, Yura,” he says quietly.

“You don’t have to do this,” snaps Yuri, rubbing stubbornly at his eyes. “You’ve come so far since then. The town needs you now, for some godforsaken reason. Don’t be so selfish.”

The words cut, but not as much as they could have. Yuuri shakes his head, leaning forward to press a kiss to the younger man’s forehead. “I have been in pieces for far too long, Yura,” he says. “It’s time I felt whole again.”

Resignation settles on Yuri’s brow. He swallows, taking a step back with the key clenched in his fist. “Take care, Katsudon,” he says, and Yuuri nods and waves as the young man leaves, heading for the trail that will take him back to town.

With a sigh, Yuuri turns his attention back to the sea again. Slowly he sheds his coat, leaving it folded on the beach next to his shoes and socks. The gulls circle overhead, crying in mournful anticipation.

At the edge of the whitewater, a figure begins to rise from the foam, long silver hair gleaming in the grey sunlight as he steps out of the waves. It’s Viktor, clad like a prince in magenta and gold, his arms outstretched. Yuuri’s breath hitches in his throat; without hesitation, he takes off down the sand towards the waves and the waiting arms of his beloved.

And as the saltwater embraces and surrounds him, Yuuri closes his eyes and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

>  _A cottage inland_  
>  _Through a year of days_  
>  _Has latched its doors on the sea;_  
>  _But at night_  
>  _I return in my sleep_  
>  _To the cold, green lure of the waters._  
>  — from “[The Drowning](https://allpoetry.com/The-Drowning)” by Edwin John Pratt.
> 
> This piece was originally written for _[Fair Winds and Following Seas](https://yoinauticalzine.tumblr.com/)_ , a charity zine benefiting the Coral Reef Alliance. If you enjoyed this piece, please consider following the spirit of the zine and making a donation to them as well! 
> 
> The art in this piece was drawn by the amazing Schmesa. See the amazing end piece in detail [here](https://schmesa.tumblr.com/post/173617729249/i-collabed-with-omgkatsudonplease-for-the)!
> 
> There are additional ficlets for this piece, which are currently readable on [Tumblr](https://omgkatsudonplease.tumblr.com/tagged/historical%20seaside%20au/chrono). They will hopefully be moved to AO3 when I have time.
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](https://omkatsudonplease.tumblr.com/)!


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